A/N – Sorry for the longer-than-usual pause between chapters; midterms snuck up on me from behind and attacked! (I hate it when they do that) But good news is, they're all done now, so hopefully from now on updates shall be more frequent. (knock on wood…)
Warning: There's some more girls kissing in this chapter. If this bothers you in any way, then go ahead and leave now, and use the time you could have spent reading this to reevaluate your life. (I actually recommend this to anyone, it's quite therapeutic. but anyway.)
Run Away
At Ginny's suggestion, they made their way out onto the terrace and started walking down a deserted path that led toward the lake. As they went down the stairs from the terrace, Hermione caught a flash of silvery-white out of the corner of her eye, over toward one of the far benches. It hardly registered though, because she was too caught up in Ginny's continued presence. She had planned on stealing a few dances with Ginny under her disguise as a man, and then at least she would have the memories to enjoy. Flirting, long conversations, and walking alone on the grounds together had not entered into it.
Hermione was too happy to care about deviations from the plan, anyway, especially when they climbed up the rock and admired the view. This was a decidedly romantic situation, she thought as she spread out her cloak for them to sit on, and Hermione found herself growing nervous. She had little real expertise in this area-Wanda didn't count at all; that had been too much of a fiasco to even count as a learning experience. Even under a false identity, she didn't want to hopelessly embarrass herself. She forgot her worries though, when Ginny pointed out the regrettable lack of more champagne to drink with the desserts. Here was something she knew she could do.
Vinomenti, she thought pointedly, holding her wand over Ginny's glass. At the same moment, she held the idea of perfect champagne in her mind, and gave her wand an almost imperceptible flick, so it would come out chilled. A stream of champagne flowed from her wand tip into Ginny's glass, and Ginny was obviously impressed. Hermione gladly explained the process when Ginny asked, only stopping when she realized that she was giving an overly-technical description of the spell, something most people who weren't Hermione didn't usually do when asked a simple question…
She stopped her enthusiastic explanation and looked over at Ginny, just as a cloud uncovered the face of the moon, and a bright beam of moonlight hit the spot where Ginny was sitting. Hermione almost gasped audibly, so taken was she with her friend's beauty. She was already very pretty in ordinary conditions, but these were far from ordinary...the moonlight picked out the highlights in her hair, giving her a faintly sparkly, glinting aura. Her face seemed to glow with enjoyment, and one part of Hermione's mind registered that it must be because of her that Ginny was enjoying herself so much, but she was too caught up in the beauty before her to pay that part much attention. Every plane and curve of Ginny's body seemed to be in perfect harmony, from the graceful bow of her smiling mouth, to her eyes which glittered brightly in the moonlight, to the curve of her shoulder where one strap of her dress robes had slipped down to her arm at some point…Hermione could have stayed drinking in the entrancing sight for hours, but she brought herself back to the present with a slight shake of her head. Focus, Hermione! She told herself. No going off into dreamland while she's sitting right here next to you.
Ginny gave the wine-conjuring spell a try, at Hermione's encouragement. Hermione knew she would be able to do it; she had always been strong in charms, and had often helped teach difficult charms to other students during the second incarnation of the DA. Unfortunately, when Ginny spoke the incantation, an icy slush poured from the wand, and she cried out in disappointment. Hermione saw her mistake at once—she had moved her wand far too violently; it only took the slightest flick to chill the liquid. Her mood brightened again when Hermione explained her mistake, and she sipped at the frozen liquid experimentally.
"It's actually good!" she exclaimed, surprised. "Here, try some!"
Hermione met Ginny's eyes over the cup and found herself unable to look away from Ginny's dancing, almost knowing look. Ginny didn't seem to be looking at "Herman"; Hermione felt like her eyes were looking straight past all the artifice of that night to the real Hermione. She tasted the proffered wine, and still entranced by Ginny's gaze, all she could think of was that it reminded her of a slushy that she had had once in an American movie theater.
"A slushy?" Ginny inquired, not breaking eye contact.
Hermione found herself unable to form a coherent answer, so captivating was Ginny's gaze. Then, before she knew what was happening, the glass was gone, and it was replaced by Ginny, leaning ever closer. Hermione stopped breathing and couldn't have moved if she wanted to. Then Ginny's lips met hers with a soft, tender lightness, and Hermione moved her head fractionally closer in order to kiss back. Then Ginny sneezed, jerking back, and Hermione's only thought was that she was already forgetting the sensation of the one short kiss, and she wanted to remember it forever. Then Ginny was holding Hermione in her arms and kissing her again, very carefully, and Hermione responded in kind, and tentatively put an arm around Ginny's waist. It was heaven.
But then, Ginny had sneezed again, and she broke the kiss and pulled back enough to say to Hermione, "This has to go," in a tone that brokered no argument. Hermione, whose mind was still reeling, gave her head a small shake to clear it, without much effect.
"What?"
"This mustache! It's damn hard to kiss you with it on…" Ginny smirked mischievously and Hermione felt her stomach do a half flip. "…Unless you didn't want me to kiss you again." Hermione's dazed mind battled with the opposing concepts of not kissing Ginny again, and the fact that Ginny obviously planned to do so, and how could she ask someone to take off their mustache… unless she knew?
"I, of course I do, I mean, what do you mean?" She stuttered, trying to express several lines of thought at once and utterly failing.
Ginny looked into her eyes just as a loud rustle came from the trees, and a pine cone flew out and hit Ginny hard on the shoulder. "Ow!" she cried, jumping up. Hermione froze.
"Oh shit…it can't be…" she breathed, tendrils of fear creeping into her voice.
But it was. None other than Wanda herself stepped from the trees, covered in pine needles, a look of crazed vengeance written across her face. Hermione had dearly wished never to see her again after they broke up. Especially after she heard the stories…
Her throat suddenly dry, Hermione swallowed and found her voice.
"How did you GET here?" she demanded, finding that her voice was shaking. Damn, she had thought that crossing the Atlantic ocean would put her out of the woman's reach once and for all! Wanda eyed Ginny threateningly, but Hermione was far more scared for herself. Wanda never laid the blame on her replacements; she seemed incapable of believing that anyone in their right mind would actually prefer someone else over her.
"It's not important how I got here!" The witch shouted maniacally, and she launched into a diatribe against Hermione. Hermione quailed in terror. There was no telling what this woman might do in her present state. Hermione nervously retreated, trying to plan her escape. If worst came to worst she could just make a run for it, and hopefully Ginny would be smart enough to follow.
All thoughts of Ginny were driven from her mind, however, when Wanda raised her wand and approached Hermione, an insane glint in her eye. Suddenly the stories of Wanda using an Unforgivable on her last girlfriend didn't seem so far-fetched. Hermione let out a strangled "eep!" and scrambled off the rock, self-preservation her only coherent thought as she ran at breakneck speed back to the castle.
H H H
She was breathing hard by the time she reached the doors of Hogwarts, and she sagged onto one of the benches on the terrace. She thought she had a pretty good head start on Wanda, who after all didn't know the grounds, but she still needed to find a place to hide until the crazed witch gave up looking for her and left. As she caught her breath, she heard a sound of murmured voices coming from the opposite end of the terrace. In fact, she thought she recognized the voices. She could make out a dark shape behind a bench there, and curious, she got up and went over to investigate.
The dark shape behind the bench resolved into what appeared to be two young men in a rather intimate position, reclining on the ground behind the bench. One had white-blond hair that shone in the moonlight, and the other had dark hair that blended into his companion's dark robes. They looked for all the world like – Harry and Malfoy? What she saw didn't make sense at first, but Hermione was a girl of facts, and if she saw something in front of her very eyes, it was hard to deny it. As implausible as it seemed, her first impression had obviously been right. Malfoy leaned with his back against the back of the bench, and Harry was reclined with his head in Malfoy's lap, looking out at the grounds dreamily while Malfoy let one hand play idly with Harry's hair. They both looked totally relaxed in each other's company, and were talking softly together.
Hermione was looking forward to hearing the explanation for this, but now was not the time. This was bound to be a long story, and it wouldn't take that long for Wanda to find her way up from the lake.
"Harry?" She said, her voice coming out a tad squeakier than she expected. Well, it was a bit of a shock finding the two of them like this. Not like she couldn't have seen it coming, though. She had never seen two people who were so obsessed with each other, except maybe the way Ginny had been obsessed with Harry in her first year. Oh, Ginny…
"Hermione?" asked Harry, as Hermione walked around the bench. "I didn't know you were here!" He scooted himself up to sit upright in Malfoy's lap, whose face had instantly assumed a mask of cool boredom at the sight of his former school mate.
"How've you been? Did you come with anyone?" Harry asked cheerily.
Hermione gave a nervous glance over her shoulder. "I've been fine, thanks, Harry. I would love to stick around and chat but I can't really stay out here in the open, like this."
"Why, what's the matter?" Harry looked instantly more alert, and shot a glance behind Hermione as if expecting a werewolf to materialize on the empty lawn behind her. Malfoy rolled his eyes.
"Um, personal problems, nothing serious…Let's just say there's someone I really don't want to run into right now." Harry looked rather disappointed. Malfoy rolled his eyes again. Hermione had a sudden brainwave. "Harry, you wouldn't happen to know of any rooms in the castle that I could stay in for a bit, where no one would be able to find me?"
Harry brightened up again and reached into his back pocket, and pulled out a folded piece of parchment that Hermione recognized at once. Why did he still have that? She bit back her reproach, though, deciding that the most important thing right now was to get out of Wanda's reach. Harry tapped the marauders' map with his wand and consulted it for a few minutes. Hermione threw another glance over her shoulder, involuntarily. His head still buried in the map, Harry beckoned her over.
"I would have just told you to use the Room of Requirement, but everyone knows about that now, so it wouldn't really do much good if you don't want to be found…The classrooms are all deserted though, because school's out, and Filch is in the dungeons with Mrs. Norris," he pointed at a spot on the map, "So you won't have to worry about them. This person you don't want to run into, did they go to Hogwarts?" he asked her, in a more calculating tone.
"No, she's never been here before," Hermione answered.
"Good! Then I'd say your best bet is the Divinations classroom; it's pretty hard to find and it doesn't even look like a classroom from the outside; but I doubt someone who doesn't know the castle would even be able to find it." Seeing her look of hesitation and interpreting it correctly, he pointed to the map again. "And you don't have to worry about Trelawney, she's in the Great Hall and I somehow doubt she'll be able to make it up to the tower tonight." He pointed to the dot on the map that said S. Trelawney, which was suspiciously close to where Hermione remembered the drinks table being in the Great Hall.
"Great, thanks!" said Hermione, hazarding another glance back toward the lake. Wanda should be emerging from the trees at any moment; Hermione hadn't got that much of a head start. "Well, good night then, Harry…Malfoy," she added with a curt nod, feeling it not right to have ignored the other boy completely throughout the whole exchange. He returned her nod stiffly, and she turned and fled up the stairs into the castle.
She managed to reach the seventh floor without being seen; all of the people in the castle were in the Great Hall, and she had been able to sneak around the edge of the entrance hall so that anyone who happened to be looking through the open doors of the Great Hall would have missed her in the gloom. She cast a quick Alohamora at the trap door, and climbed up into the dark Divinations room, closing and locking the door behind her. It looked exactly the same as it had the last time she had been there, so many years ago, on the day she had walked out. She walked over to a window and opened the heavy curtains to let the moonlight in, then sank back into a nearby pouf. She did nothing else to light the room; its dimness was perfect for brooding in, which was all she felt like doing right now.
The evening had been going so well – far better than she had ever planned on, and she had even begun let herself hope that she might actually have a chance with Ginny. She seemed to like "Herman" an awful lot, so maybe if Hermione had had a chance to let Ginny know that it was really her, they could have worked something out between them. Hermione didn't think Ginny would have stopped being interested once she knew Herman's real identity, and Hermione was sure she could have come up with a way to explain it all so that it made sense. But then her crazy ex had had to turn up, in the worst way possible, and Hermione had run, and now Ginny couldn't possibly still like Herman, seeing what his ex-girlfriend was like. In the heat of the moment, Hermione had never registered that Wanda had been calling her by her real name, leaving Ginny with a much different impression of the whole affair. Hermione picked up a gold-embroidered pillow and threw it angrily to the floor, and then got up to pace around the room. The events of that evening kept running around in circles in her head, but for once she could not think of any way out of her predicament. She sulked over to the window she had opened and stared out. Presently, a figure hurried across the lawn far below, but she couldn't tell who it was from this high up, and in the dark. Probably that crazy witch out looking for me, she thought. I hope she gives up soon so I don't have to spend the whole night up here. She didn't find this prospect too likely though, so she threw herself back down on the pouf. Isn't my life just perfect? she asked ironically, as she settled in for a long, sleepless night locked in the Divinations room.
-fin (pour maintenant)-
A/N: Sorry for the angsty cliffhanger, but it's time to switch back to Ginny's POV now. Aren't you just dying to see what she makes of Wanda?? Reviews equal love!!!
planeAmage- Thanks! I had originally intended to have the pov's switch every other chapter, but that would have made some of the chapters really long, so I broke it up. I agree that it would make more sense that way….but I think having chapters that you could read in one sitting without your bum falling asleep is also pretty important!s3xy-Lady – hmmmm, we shall see if they get together! There's only one way to find out! (I'm so bad.)
Vampslayer08- Thanks! I tried to make Wanda as crazy as I could, glad to see you thought so too :)
Believe The Lie-Why thank you! haha, hope you come out of that closet eventually, it might get kind of boring in there.
ogis-you complement me too much! what if I start to think too much of my writing abilities?? Just kidding; I think you're sweet to say that ; ) It's this kind of encouragement that keeps me writing the stories! bisous : )
Razor bladed heart-I guess I just like ending at harsh places? ...because I did it again in this chapter...Don't worry, I have every intention of finishing this story!